


Falling bodies

by lilith_morgana



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 02:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17500265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: Leta Lestrange doesn’t like Albus Dumbledore. Neither does Albus Dumbledore. They both know a thing or two about secrets and love, however. Spoilers for Crimes of Grindelwald.





	Falling bodies

**Author's Note:**

> So this is what I wrote in my head while re-watching Crimes of Grindelwald. Not sure why.

  
  
  


  
  
_ You can give me nothing _

_ but light, just light. _   
\--Pär Lagerkvist   
  
  


 

  
  
**1\. Gravity** **  
** **  
**   
They’re studying the significance of parallax in celestial observations - one roll of parchment,  _ mind your handwriting, Lestrange _ \- up in the Astronomy tower and Newt keeps his hand on her back the entire time.    
  
It’s a constellation of its own: the curve of his neck when he bends down to kiss her; the taut line of hers as she reaches up; the slightly lopsided contour of his nose; a birthmark almost entirely covered by her hairline. The weight of their bodies against each other, tugging at the universe and Newt looks at her like she will be there like a star, unchanging through the years. Perhaps she intends to.    
  
She tells him the legend of Altair and Vega, the lovers separated by the Milky Way.    
  
“Once a year they are said to be reunited,” she says, letting her words slip out into the constellations above. “In some of the stories magpies are forming a bridge across the river that’s keeping them apart.”   
  
Newt murmurs something she cannot hear, his mouth buried in her hair.    
  
  
  
\-  - -   
  
  
  
They ought to have loathed each other on sight. It might have been simpler and less conspicuous if they had.

People find him annoying: too gentle, too disobedient, too slippery in discussions, too bloody _strange_ , too helplessly awkward around others and not _nearly_ ashamed enough of it. It can never be enough for some people. They need to see him broken and he doesn’t break, even as roars of laughter follow him out of the Great Hall or into the safety of his dormitory. That is what Hogwarts cannot forgive Newton Scamander.   
  
People find _her_ annoying: she’s rash and rational, hot-headed and arrogant, unaccustomed to kindness, to friendships, to moving around others and their ridiculous edges. Wounded glances and raised eyebrows - _Achilles’ heel_ they call it; someone tells her this in a tight, wounded voice. Bluntness never killed anyone but they certainly act like it can. Leta raises her head and walks past the fools, hissing hexes that get caught in Newt’s counter-spells.    
  
They share a curiosity, a deep-seated thirst for knowledge that would have put them in Ravenclaw had it not been for those little things that mark them as opposites. Her curiosity is burning a hole in her chest, burning down everything in its path like wildfire; his is wide-open and calm, sits there without judgement, without fear.   
  
“That’s why the animals confide in me, I suppose,” he explains to her, patiently. “They’d like you, too. If you kept still.”  
  
“I _am_ still,” she protests though she understands what he means.   
  
They ought to have loathed each other on sight but instead they become each other’s shields.   
  
  
  
  
\-  - -  
  
  
  
  
All the students, even most of the Slytherins, love Professor Dumbledore. He is full of humour and a certain kind of _style_ , he listens to them, inspires them and she even hears some of the more experienced seventh years giggle about how _handsome_ he is. Their Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons are joyous occasions, brimful of theory and practice. Dumbledore is so clever you can see it on his skin, taste it in the air around him and oh, he is a _brilliant_ teacher, his enthusiasm for magic and its uses makes the classroom boil with anticipation - and yet all Leta can think about is all the things he must be hiding. She grew up a Lestrange, grow up a murderer, she knows everything about secrets.    
  
Professor Dumbledore has them in abundance.   
  
He is typically polite, often smiling and she always knows that he does not _like_ her. It’s nothing new, most teachers have that same look in their eyes when they think she can’t see, but it hurts a little because it’s _him_. Newt claims it’s untrue - Newt _adores_ him, adores the mutuality of the adoration and sits starry-eyed and grinning every time they’re in the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom - but she knows better.   
  
Leta sits in Dumbledore’s office on a regular basis, conjuring up explanations for her latest mistakes. It’s a frustrating experience for them both. She guards her words in this castle, protects them with her life and speaks very little to other people apart from Newt. With him everything remains safe in a way that brings tears to her eyes when she thinks about it, brings hexes to her hands without hesitation. Half her visits in here are results of that. The other half is about her own Slytherin pride.   
  
Dumbledore doesn’t appear to make a distinction between the two.  
  
“Jelly bean?” he asks when she finally slumps down in the chair by his desk. It’s the same spot as last week. And the month before that.   
  
_Nine times this year_ , he had reminded her last time, had said it in that absent-minded tone that fools others but not her. _I shall take it as a compliment that you choose my lessons to be this creative with your magic._ She knows he observes her ever so carefully since Vera Parkinson let everyone in the Great Hall know that Scabby Scamander and the Lestrange Freakshow had been snogging in Hogsmeade. Knows he quietly traces every scrap of dark arts that goes on in the castle - there’s a _lot_ of it, he must be a busy man - to see where it will lead him.   
  
Leta sighs, leans back in her seat. 

Professor Dumbledore’s office, she thinks, is set up as a home rather than a workplace.    
  
She has evolved into an excellent judge, having seen her fair share of them by now. Professor Vintra’s in the Ravenclaw wing - desolate and sort of colourless in a rather pathetic way much like the man himself; Professor Merrythought’s that is full of books - pile after pile of open books and closed ones, books with quills as bookmarks and notebooks halfway finished with scribblings and spells; Professor Oiswin’s where you feel like you visit someone’s mad aunt for all the colourful paraphernalia hanging off the walls, accompanied by the distinct scent of birds.    
  
Dumbledore’s office is open, always  _ open _ .    
  
Accessible and crammed with things from floor to ceiling, which makes walking into his office a bit like visiting a shop in Diagon Alley - or several shops at once, since his interests seem to reach between celestial bodies and potion supplies via sweets and Muggle literature. Blankets tossed over the back of a small red divan, cupboards with doors that don’t close all the way and reveal substantial collections of potions and food - if the impending wars creep up on them in the future you could hide in here for a long time and survive.    
  
Not that Leta would pick Dumbledore’s quarters. Even in times of war.    
  
  
  
  
\-  - -   
  
  
  
  
Once, Dumbledore ushers her to his office without questioning, without the usual explanation required. He’s softer that time, his face kind and his gaze almost gentle like Newt’s except of course it’s  _ nothing  _ like Newt’s because Dumbledore is still searching her for answers, would never merely accept her at face value or take her word for something.    
  
His hand is unfaltering on her back, leading her out of the classroom, through the corridor and into his office; whenever she tries to flinch away he corrects her steps, as though he has taken charge of her movements. Perhaps he has.    
  
They’ve encountered their boggarts and Leta has burst into tears in front of a whole room full of students; he has firmly dismissed the lesson, hand-waved away all questions and silenced the giggling. A Gryffindor lion as defender, a flood of light to see you through.  _ This is what it’s like to have him on your side,  _ she thinks briefly and for the first time in three years she is jealous of Newt and what he possesses.    
  
She sits in Dumbledore’s office for an hour; beside her is a plate of biscuits and scones with raspberry jam as well as a chipped tea cup with cinnamon tea that she never touches. And chocolate, large chunks of it on her plate by the tea cup, its edges already melting near the hot drink.    
  
“Now, Miss Lestrange, I just want you to know that what happened today isn’t important.” He raises his own tea cup and takes a sip. “What’s important is that you keep fighting. Resistance is the only way to learn the defence against the dark-”   
  
“I killed my brother,” Leta interrupts before she can change her mind. “That was my boggart. It was- Oh, I  _ can’t- _ ”   
  
The truth -  _ almost  _ all of it, almost everything from that boat, that  _ night _ , that awful slice of life that she has tried to bury but never could - slips out of her and into Dumbledore’s office and she doesn’t dare look up at him when she’s done talking but she can feel his hand on hers and it’s enough to make her sob.    
  
  
  
\-  - -   
  
  
  
All the students, even most of the Slytherins, cheer when they expect her to be expelled during their sixth year. The Jarveys, the blasted bloody Jarveys that had been set loose and attacked Vera Parkinson - she  _ deserves  _ it and Leta isn’t going to waste a single tear on that girl, lifelong scars or not - and Professor Merrythought’s hand on Leta’s shoulder. Then, beside Merrythought she spots Professor Wigworthy followed by Professor Pocus. They form a wall of discontent, an impenetrable obstacle she somehow has to get through.    
  
She thinks about her father’s eyes. The coldness in them. She thinks about the family tree where her flower is too pale against the backdrop, too  _ pink  _ as though it has been designed specifically to suit her badly. She thinks about what excuse she will weave from this mess, what she can convince them of back home, the matters she must conceal and the matters she must elaborate on. He’ll have her sent away, have already spoken of Durmstrang before but the name alone shatters all of her will to live. He’ll find a way somehow to punish her and she must endure it; he cannot win.    
  
And then Newt stands there in front of her, shielding her with all of his awkward length and those shoulders that are suddenly so broad, as though he grew up overnight.  _ Oh, Newt. _ One day, she knows, one day he will do something incredibly important and the rest of them will owe him a debt he will never collect. She wants him to have the  _ world _ .   
  
“The Jarveys are mine,” he says. He’s a terrible liar but his stubbornness and loyalty triumph all the forces in this hopeless world.    
  
All the gathered professors look at her, at him, at each other.    
  
Leta swallows the protest and meets his gaze that twists between the teachers until it reaches her and it contains so much love that she has to look the other way.    
  
“The Jarveys are mine,” he repeats.    
  
She says nothing. There are no words.    
  


  
  
\-  - -   
  
  
  
  
The busy sound of late afternoon surrounds them.   
  
Her hands are icy when she rubs them against each other, her mouth is dry.    
  
“I’ve got you, Leta.” Newt sounds more confident than she’s ever heard him; he stands by the window in the corridor that leads out to Herbology classes but they’re not going today. If the upset parents and the Ministry representatives get their way, Newt won’t be going to Herbology classes at all in the future. “I’ve  _ got  _ you. It’s alright.”   
  
“No.” Leta shakes her head. “You can’t - they’ll  _ expel  _ you and you can’t  _ do  _ that. Not for me.”   
  
“Who else would I do it for?”    
  
“Someone who deserves it, Newt.”    
  
He gives her a quick smile, a little tremble through his solemn face and he’s so beautiful and so honest that it hardens something inside her to a point of no return. Years later she will remember the exact way he had looked in this very moment and how it had pushed her into acts of self-preservation or cruelty - she will never know which one it is, not even in the future when she thinks about him and she  _ will  _ think about him every day for as long as she lives.     
  
She doesn’t say  _ I’ll miss you  _ as she follows him to the train that will take him back to his parents; she doesn’t say  _ I love you _ as he holds her in his arms and she leans her chin against his shoulder, presses her mouth to the infinite softness of his neck; she doesn’t say anything to anyone outside of class for the remaining month of that term.    
  
  
  
  
\-  - -   
  
  
  
  
Her voice is so tired when she finally speaks again. She can hear her own fury in it but it gives a brittle noise as it goes down, as though it has been hollowed out lately for lack of use. She needs to practice it now, re-learn her own anger. These are darkening times - the worst of times, people say, the approaching of the first war that could tear the continent apart and it won’t spare the wizards, war never spares the wizards - and she’s a Lestrange. Whatever happens they won’t be taking her without a fight.    
  
“Newt asked me to give you this.” She stands in Dumbledore’s office again, holding out a parcel of something she hasn’t tried to have a peak at despite wanting to so badly her fingers had twitched the first time she saw it.    
  
Dumbledore looks at her for a long time, slowly arching one eyebrow. He appears to be tired too; she wonders if it is because the summer has been unforgiving, if the reports of Grindelwald’s various triumphs in northern Europe are breaking him - some of the Slytherins had talked about it the entire train ride to Hogwarts, had thrown speculations and hopes around like first-year-charms. Leta thinks about it with a chill down her spine.    
  
And that day when Newt walked away with his animals and his bags, that  _ stitch  _ in her. It’s worse now, much worse, a terrible ache inside her bones and the lack of him by her side creating a loneliness she had never been able to imagine.  _ Don’t worry about me _ , he had written.  _ They are sending me to aunt Grete in Copenhagen for a while. She works with diricawls.  _   
  
But he ought to be  _ here  _ and the guilt makes it hard to breathe. When she looks at Dumbledore, at his unreadable expression and his composed gaze from which nothing ever slips out, she knows he can sense it in her. The truth. The shame. Before him she’s transparent - or a mirror - and it’s a disease in her to know this.  _   
_   
“I know you were protecting him from me,” she says.     
  
“Why do you suggest that someone would require protection from you, Miss Lestrange?”    
  
It’s not until later, when she’s lying in her bed, that she realises he hadn’t denied it.    
  
  
  
  
\-  - -   
  
  
  
  
A year spent mostly in solitude takes a long time to get through.    
  
She buries herself in her homework, excels in every class and thinks about Newt as she completes inch after inch of essays, learns how to cast a Patronus powerful enough to cause even Dumbledore’s eyes to widen, conjures up well-balanced, creative charms and transfigures all matters with endless patience. She keeps her mouth shut and her hands busy; in the afternoons she tends to the animals Newt had left behind, walks down to the lake to feed the bowtruckles and to the edges of the forest to check on the spiders. It’s a way to honour him, to make amends.     
  
He writes  _ ceaselessly  _ for months. A letter every time the owls arrive; after a few failed attempts she learns how to catch them before they fall into her food, learns how to be someone who has letters sent to her.    
  
Leta keeps them under her pillow, inside her books, tucked into the inner pockets of her robes. She reads them every night before bed, again in the mornings; she reads them until every crook and curve of his handwriting is as familiar to her as his face ever was.    
  
She never writes back.    
  
Nothing in her life is dearer to her but she has to push herself away, has to free him. Her hunger is an empty space in her chest and he’s too eager to care for her, to sacrifice himself for her and Leta doesn’t want martyrs for her cause.    
  
A year spent in solitude takes a long time to go through but she does it, eventually.   
  
Her last night at Hogwarts she spends up in the Astronomy tower with Fronda, the raven Newt once rescued from a deadly fate near the lake. He had placed her in Leta’s hand after a particularly awful Potions class where parts of her hair had been set on fire and now she’s part of Leta’s life in a seamless, strange sort of way.    
  
The way  _ he’s  _ part of her life, no matter where in the world he is.    
  
The ghosts of them are still here, hiding in the tower, tangled against the cool stones: her black curls tied up in his red mess of a mane, his large freckled hands over her brown skin, a plea for more (hers), a carefully cast protection charm (his) and then afterwards a whole world that had become subtly altered. They could never get it back, the innocence they lost to each other. Some days Leta had thought they both wanted to, others she was desperately trying to wreck it even further, bury the last scraps of that childhood in the ground beneath the tower.    
  
The ghosts of them are still  _ here  _ and as she walks away from the castle for the last time she knows a part of her will linger, too.    
  
She cannot tell if it’s for good or ill.    
  


  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  


**2\. time**   
  
  
“Bathilda Bagshot” sends him an owl every year for his first fifteen years at Hogwarts. By the end of September, almost as a ritual, the letter dives through the air and lands with a thump on Albus’s breakfast plate.    
  
Some of the letters are quite extravagant - parchment that smells of saffron and orchids decorated with ink that looks like it’s made from coal from the most exquisite places on Earth. Others are torn pieces of paper with hasty scribblings on. Messages written in strict and coherent code, informal pieces written in the characteristic, sloppy handwriting that Albus has come to recognise anywhere. There are long epistolary writings and letters with no more words to them than what would fit on a traditional postcard. Enclosed are articles from foreign newspapers - of both Muggle and wizarding kind - sheet music, maps, lists with suggested reading. Some of it feels like thinly masked contempt, other things are genuinely thoughtful.     
  
And all of it is so heavily sealed that it usually takes him half a day to unjinx the correspondence if he decides that he does want to read it. He does. In the end he does, which “Bathilda Bagshot” knows only too well, a throaty laughter appearing out of thin air every time he stand there with an opened letter in his unsteady hands.    
  
“ _ Revelio _ ,” he says softly after the complex curses are lifted and Gellert’s words overwhelm him once more. It’s the boy he once knew appearing on the pages, it’s a man who is nothing like him at all, it’s a clenched fist somewhere deep in Albus’s chest.    
  
He saves some of the maps, most of the articles, all of the sheet music; he burns the letters. He composes a reply in his head that he never sends.    
  
Almost as a ritual.    
  
  
  
  
\-  - -   
  
  
  
  
Newt Scamander writes, too. In enchanted postcards he chronicles the sort of life he has had since Hogwarts threw him out. Albus reads the scant collection of sentences and smiles to himself. Newt is his hope for the future, his cure for the past. Brilliance and tenderness intertwined, a core of raw strength and integrity - despite a handful of similarities he’s  _ nothing  _ like Albus and Albus wants to drown himself in people who bear no resemblance to him at all.     
  
You could offer Newt the world and he’d shrug and walk away. At this point in his life there is nothing Albus respects more in a human being.    
  
There’s also the fact that the boy had tugged at his heartstrings from the very beginning. Albus had spotted the brothers Scamander once, walking from the grounds to the castle and something in his heart had cracked open. It had been the discrepancy, he thinks, the  _ oddness _ , the way Theseus has always stood in a room as though he has a  _ right  _ to it whereas it seems his younger brother has never even considered that something might be his in that self-assured, easy way of his brother.     
  
That odd fellow with his gentle thirst for knowledge and his wide-open heart; such an unfortunate combination requires extraordinary supervision and for a while Albus had thought that was indeed what he could offer. Eventually he had become less certain and  _ now _ , he thinks and grabs the letter from the passing owl, he wouldn’t claim his meddling has had any positive repercussions whatsoever in the boy’s life.    
  
Not that he’s wronged him either. Small mercies and a certain amount of generosity and the way things are, he can almost consider it a triumph.    
  
_ Riga is a city full of pogrebins _ , Newt writes.  _ Have also met a breeder of kelpies. _   
  
Albus smiles, re-reads it again at dusk and feels the shadows scatter.    
  
  
  


\-   - -   
  
  
  
  
The first year of war the wizarding world bustles with volunteers and ideas, with soldiers marching off to the front-lines, attracting hordes of lion-hearted fighters. For the second, any movement has to be in secrecy, which brings out the stealthier witches and wizards. The third year with its devastating losses breeds mostly contempt and darker arts than most have a stomach for.    
  
Albus travels to Diagon Alley to fetch more supplies for his lessons and meets with a few acquaintances. The only thing anyone ever talks about is the war, the consequences and the devastation and he nods, agrees, promises to see if there’s anything he can do.    
  
There is very little that he can do. Still, they do what they can, they perform their rituals and carry out their habits, chime in and carry on.    
  
They walk around the very outskirts of the grounds in the afternoons, most of the teachers with their wands raised, murmuring spells as the darkness falls over the highest towers and lowest dungeons. Cleansing, protection, concealment and repeat until they can feel the resistance of the castle in their bodies.    
  
This remains the best part of Albus’s day until peace is finally declared.     
  
  
  
  
\-  - -   
  


  
  
There are certain people for whom time itself stops, a few bright stars that break out of their own constellations.   
  
Gellert’s voice interlaced with Albus’s dreams as he’s reading loud up in his great-aunt’s attic; Albus’s fast-paced mind and neatly arranged memory both coming to a halt around that wide grin, the pulse at his wrist; the blush on Gellert’s chest through the half-open shirt, the small scar across the bridge of his nose.  
  
The relief in resting in a magic as complex and incomprehensibly large as his own; the intoxicating, overwhelming knowledge that for once he can be understood, matched, _outbalanced_.   
  
And now as the beacons around the world are lit the unvanquishable memory of that insight, that man.  
  
There are certain people that break your timeline and you will never be the same.   
  
  
  
  
\-   - -     
  
  
  
  
“Newt works for the Ministry, did you know?” Leta Lestrange, wrapped in a fur coat and armed with a small tower of books and a stern expression, asks him when he comes across her in Diagon Alley. She says it matter of factly, as though the only thing they would possibly have in common is Newt Scamander. She says it with a heavy sound, a worry through her bones.    
  
“Ah yes.” Albus thinks about the latest messages he’s received, thinks about the magical ink and the depths they cover. “The covert operations of the Ministry that everybody knows about. Your doing, perhaps?”  
  
“Hardly.” Her gaze hardens even further. “Not yours either?”  
  
He shakes his head. “No.”  
  
“I didn’t think so, considering what some of its representatives have to say about you at the moment.”  
  
“You are quite right about that,” Albus agrees. The final straw for Evermonde might have been Albus’s subtle support of Henry Potter but the truth is that it’s been a long and slow progress to earn the man’s dislike. He’s almost proud of the achievement or thinks he would be if it hadn’t been so intimately associated with his own inaction against the growing threat of the Grindelwald fanatics. His own immense failures as a wizard and a human being.   
  
“Is it Charms that have captured you?” He nods towards her books. There have been rumours about her continuing her magical education abroad - France, they say, seeking her roots - since he saw her last; he has seen her mentioned among other young and promising individuals.   
  
It’s odd now to think that he once had thought of Newt as the academic with Leta snapping at his heels. Or perhaps it’s not. _You don’t care about people enough to truly understand them, Albus_. Gellert smiles dryly in his head.   
  
“Don’t sound so surprised, Professor.” Her eyes are hard but it’s a brittle hardness buried under all that Slytherin bravado and he thinks of the sorting process, thinks of Gellert’s mockery of it, the far-reaching consequences of dividing and sorting, of making assumptions based on a moment. Thinks of how fragile their foundations are.    
  
“I’m not,” he lies.   
  
  
  
  
\-   - -  
  
  
  
  
The fourth year of war burns through the continent, through their hearts, burns everything in its path. Albus calculates their losses in his chambers at Hogwarts, stands under his ceiling made up of stars and counts in his head.   
  
All the brave ones, all the cowards, all the names that will go down in history. All those that the history books will have forgotten.   
  
He raises his wand and lights a new star for each name he rattles off in his head, offers them a place in a starry sky that looks nothing like the one outside the castle:  
  
Arvid Vilde and his wife Rosamunda; Leighton Sunders, breeder of war dragons and staunch supporter of Muggle rights.  
  
Emmeline Pyke, inventor of the curse-breaking stone that had been used in Germany and France to liberate thousands of war prisoners.   
  
Imelda Capra who sat behind Albus for seven years of Potions and had spent the war leading an incessant effort solely focused on protecting Muggle women and children. She had been found dead in a Muggle hospital outside Lyon.   
  
Most of the wizarding citizens in Hektary in Poland where the passing Muggle soldiers had managed to ruin a whole well-hidden community and then merely _left_ , the statue of secrecy protecting them from even knowing about the civilian lives erased in a heartbeat.   
  
He stands below the Plough and the North Star, looking at the mythical origin of star-crossed lovers, at the imagined bridge between the two. The magic behind his sky shivers gently in the night, sending small puffs of energy back into his body. Soon the war is over, or so they say. Soon the Muggle generals and politicians will find themselves satiated at long last. He hopes they’re right.   
  
Albus sends stars into the void above his head and reads the latest letter addressed to him from Ms Bathilda Bagshot. The parchment is soft by now and torn at the edges and falling apart at the place where he’s folded it. Each fibre of it has chafed against another, a quiet erosion of whatever was there before. 

He allows himself to read the final sentence one last time before he throws the letter on his desk and raises his wand, readying himself to burn it the same way he has burned every word, every long paragraph and sharp truth so many times before.

_The revolution needs you, Albus. Come home._   
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


  
**3\. distance**  
  
  
She meets Theseus at a Ministry gathering in Prague two years after the war that has ended but still _remains_ everywhere between their bodies. He has fought in it, she has studied it and as the dark red wine fills her up she leans closer to him, catching his grin in her own. His face is calm, smooth, but there’s a trace of fire under his skin and she wants to taste it.   
  
“May I escort you back to your place?” he asks and his voice is soft and dark at the same time.   
  
Leta nods, thinking that she ought to think of him as Newt’s older brother - _complicated_ , he would say and look away, _it’s complicated and I’m nothing like him_ \- but in this light he looks only like himself and she wants to never stop looking.   
  
He doesn’t even kiss her at first, not for a long time, and she wonders for an equally long time, if it has to do with Newt the way most things in her life has had to do with Newt.   
  
She never asks; they speak very little of his brother.   
  
  
  
\-   - -  
  
  
  
She was an insatiable child, she knows this now.   
  
She was a walking hunger, an absence in the world and Newt had been so very willing to give her purpose. All of his unwanted nurturing, every scrap of gentleness in his soul had found a home in her and she had closed herself around it, swallowed him whole. In return, she hopes, she had given him other things but if she knows him at all, she will never find out because he will never tell a living soul.   
  
Growing up, growing into a woman, into a career, into the name she feels like a lie at the back of her tongue she still finds herself starving, always craving everything and Theseus, oh he has so _much_.    
  
He has so much and is so generous with it that she cannot help but smile back at him when he smiles at her, slowly raising his hand to cup her cheek or brush a strand of hair from her face. Newt who doesn’t want to pick a side in anything, who shies away from statements and causes and Leta who wants nothing more than to have something to fight for. He never did understand that about her. His brother, proud and direct, declares everything. From the very first moment they discuss it Theseus gives her his opinion on current affairs - he’s fiercely loyal to the ministry but displeased with their rigidness _though we can always hope to change it from the inside_ ; he’s pro-Muggle, anti-Grindelwald and thinks purity of blood is a delusion for the Dark Ages _but I don’t suppose you were shocked to hear that?_   
  
Leta shakes her head and wants to laugh.   
  
She cannot afford _not_ to pick a side and Theseus stands there so bright, so _unbowed_. His arms are open and strong; when she falls into them and into _him_ the world alters, splits open and for a second she imagines that she can slip inside it.   
  
  
  
\-   - -  
  
  
  
They never talk about Newt; he always lives in the spaces between the words, the pauses and hesitations, the quiet moments of rest.   


_ Bosom friends _ , Mrs Scamander says once and Leta adopts the word, keen on its neutrality.    
  
  
  
\-   - -   
  


  
  
  
Theseus plans their future with an enthusiasm that takes her breath away.   
  
He proposes marriage one early morning outside the Ministry of Magic - which is quite fitting for them both - and summons his grandmother’s old engagement ring from his inner pocket, cheeks blushing furiously as Leta looks at him in disbelief.   
  
He wants to build a house, settle them both down somewhere in the outskirts of a city now that the war has passed and everything falls back into place; he wants a garden with a greenhouse - the Hufflepuff within, she teases and he finds it hilarious every time - and an attic with old treasures. Children, he hints once but Leta feels her throat constrict at the mere thought, a quiet sort of panic at the idea of carrying her stolen bloodline further into the lie in which it does not belong. Cats, she suggests and Theseus nods approvingly. They can both agree on cats.   
  
Theseus Scamander, a perfectly bred British pureblood with a magic so bright it cuts through every doubt.   
  
The future is his. It is only sometimes - very rarely - that she allows herself to wish for a future that she could own for herself. Even rarer that she grants herself the right to think of how it would be created, what it would be like.   
  
“Perhaps you would prefer to live in Paris?” he asks as they visit the city and spend hour after hour strolling along the cobbled streets of Montmartre, criss-crossing through vendors and magical displays of food and art and various winter celebrations. The air is crisp and the sun makes the half-frozen metals around them glitter. “Or London?”  
  
Leta tucks her hand deeper into her pocket and lets him hold the other one, clasp it between his gloved ones.   
  
“I can live anywhere with you,” she responds, puffs of smoke emerging from her mouth with every word.   
  
He pulls her closer, grinning widely.   
  
  
  
\-   - -  
  
  
  
Theseus sums up Newt’s correspondence - mostly postcards - to the family with a dry smile and a glass of firewhisky balancing in his hand.   
  
Leta sits in an armchair, pretending to read, to listen with half an ear while her mind paints the most lovely pictures it is capable of, giving him the life he deserves.   
  
Theseus writes - proper letters, long and wordy - regularly to his brother and offers details of their engagement, their plans, their hopes for the future. He tells her Newt has agreed to be part of their wedding, that Newt has asked him to give Leta his regards.   
  
His regards. Leta nods, smiles and looks away.   
  


  
  
\-   - -   
  


  
  
And then suddenly Newt stands in front of her again briefly and he’s so beautiful as a grown man that Leta wants to cry.   
  
She speaks of Theseus, pronounces his name clearly and with great distinction as though she can mask everything else with her dedication to him; she speaks of supper, as though it has ever been a possibility; she speaks of the past and he opens up to her then, only for a beat but it’s there and she can’t breathe.    
  
After the meeting that goes terribly wrong, Theseus paces through their living room incessantly, raking hands through his hair in a manner that reminds Leta of her future father-in-law.    
  
“He’ll go off and get himself killed,” he mutters when she runs her hands over his arms, rubbing comfort into his veins. “Foolish, stubborn little -”   
  
“We’ll protect him,” Leta says.    
  
Theseus presses his forehead against hers and they stand there for a long time, immovable creatures against the night sky.    
  
  
  
\-   - -   
  
  


She grew up a Lestrange, she grew up a murderer, she knows everything about shame.    
  
Now she’s old enough to understand that Dumbledore does, too. 

When they hunt him down at Hogwarts with their bone-hard formalities - she has never loved Theseus and his Ministry dedication less, never seen his ambition and lawfulness in a less flattering light; her face hurts from keeping a neutral mask - he welcomes them with a smooth sort of sarcasm. Soft-spoken and pleasant as they shackle his might, but Leta spots the resistance in his gaze, that hard rebellious side of him that she has only ever heard others speak of before. Of course it would take someone as brutally bureaucratic as Travers to bring it out. Dumbledore submits but he’s untouched, _unbowed_ before their rules and regulations.   
  
Perhaps for the first time, she watches him with the awe Newt would display back when Hogwarts was their home.   
  
“Regret is my constant companion,” he tells her as she wallows in the past, her hands still recalling the sensation of her old desk, the whiff of cold air coming from the windows, the scribbled letters on the seasoned wood and how her chest had imploded when she wrote them. “Do not let it become yours.”   
  
Leta thinks of her baby brother screaming, thinks of of the dark, icy water, thinks of darkness, darkness, darkness.   
  
A few moments later, in his office, and she recalls all the stars from his ceiling again, every odd constellation and exact replica of the Milky Way that she would trace with her eyes. Follow to its conclusion. She had taken comfort in that for reasons she cannot properly fathom; she stares at it now, willing it to offer the same consolation.   
  
“I have always liked astronomy.” Dumbledore stands beside her, his arms folded across his chest and his head tipped back to take in as much as possible of the whole view. Then he glances sideways at her. Leta thinks about the way Travers had cast that spell, thinks about the look on Dumbledore’s face as he had watched the pictures of himself many years ago, thinks about the way the two wizards had stood there, borderless, _abundant_.  
  
“There’s a scar in your left palm,” she says and it isn’t a question.   
  
She looks at the animated planetary system over his window, fixes her gaze on the leaping moon that wants to escape its predestined circle of existence. It bounces erratically, flickering like a star. Blood magic, old as time and powerful as nothing else in the world.  
  
“Yes,” Dumbledore agrees. His voice is low, softer than she remembers it from her days at Hogwarts but he did spent most of that time explaining proper manners to her, had no reason to be gentle.   
  
“The Ministry thinks you’re still his ally.”  
  
“I know.” He laughs joylessly. “There are, unfortunately, many great fools in their ranks.”  
  
“Most of them are, yes.” Leta smoothes her hands over her sides, feels their dampness through her dress. Hogwarts always did bring out the restless worry in her, underlining all of her faults and none of her virtues. “But then there are witches like me.”  
  
He smiles quickly; the smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes and she thinks about how it had before, when he was teaching the students. Guiding them, guarding them, _giving_ them pieces of his own magic, his own self. There is a man here that she has never seen and she smiles tentatively back at him.   
  
“Then there are witches like you, indeed,” Dumbledore says.   
  
For a moment they don’t speak; above them the starry sky seems to soar with magic, a low hum in her chest.   
  
“So you’re bound to him and can’t move against him. Or you _can_ , but-”   
  
Their eyes meet, she feels his gaze like when she was a student.    
  
“I can’t.” He looks up at the ceiling again. “Not yet. Not - not like _this_.”  
  
“But you send others in your place,” she says and now the fire is in her body instead, fueling every syllable.   
  
Dumbledore sighs - a drawn-out, almost tortured sigh that moves through him as he turns to her again.    
  
“He’s an escaped criminal,” he says. “Everyone is looking for him-”  
  
“I don’t care what you tell yourself to feel better. I care about the Scamanders.”   
  
It sounds less overwhelming when she calls them that, even in her head. _The Scamanders_. As though the two of them - and to a much lesser extent their parents - are not her entire family, her fixed mark in a vast galaxy that does not want her presence.    
  
He nods; a dark shadow crosses his features. “I know. As do I.”  
  
“Yet you sent Newt to hunt Grindelwald down for you? And now that he’s escaped you send him back again?”  
  
“I _cannot_ move against Grindelwald,” he says and his face is, for once, curiously open.   
  
Once, during one of her visits here as a student, Dumbledore had told her about a few Romanian witches who had managed to understand the stars well enough to channel their magic through them. She doesn’t recall the details now; she had never listened carefully enough back then.   
  
“But Newt can?” Her throat is dry and itching, her hands tremble uselessly at her sides. “He’s - you talked him into it? How? What did he ask in return?”  
  
“That’s the thing about Newt,” Dumbledore says softly. “He doesn’t do things for himself.”  
  
She should never have let him escape, the truth rams right into her. Should never have detached herself from him, never have left him alone, should never have let him go. He doesn’t do things for himself and this world, _oh Newt,_ this world cannot handle people like that.   
  
Leta lets one hand rest on the wand in her inner pocket. She’s readying herself for the future, for what must inevitably happen.   
  
“Tell me about Grindelwald,” she demands. “Tell me _everything_ about him.”  
  
  
  
\-   - -  
  
  
  
The amphitheater is boiling with his presence.   
  
Masked acolytes everywhere, subtly stewarding the crowd; a scent of incense in the air, a palpable tension reaching between the men and women standing here, waiting as though they are expecting to witness a miracle. Leta wonders how much of this that Grindelwald has orchestrated himself, how many seemingly spontaneous details he’s directed beforehand. _His vanity and arrogance_ , Dumbledore had said in that peculiarly soft tone, his voice like a caress. _Those are his greatest faults. But it is passion that truly blinds him._ _  
_ _  
_At first the meeting and its demagogue is surprisingly calm. He claims he does not fight out of hate and Leta thinks of how incredibly privileged he must be if that is true. She watches the faces of everyone who listens, lets her gaze travel hungrily. It’s of utmost importance to have perfect knowledge of your surroundings.  
  
Then the crowd erupts and the Aurors lose their momentum, their _heads_ and Theseus is there but unable to control them when they throw themselves at the man in the burning circle. Theseus is there and she wishes he wasn’t, but it can’t change anything. The sight of Newt and him together, the memories of Hogwarts, of London, of Theseus’s hands around her face; Leta bites back a furious scream. Grindelwald hasn’t even spotted her yet. _He gives very little thought to those he considers inferior._ _  
_  
“Do you think Dumbledore will mourn for you?”  
  
And then her own voice, stronger than she’s ever heard it before in her life.   
  
“Grindelwald! _Stop_!” _  
_  
_Vanity_.  
  
She takes a few steps towards the man who has turned to look at her like one looks at an intruder. Or an insect, something to be brushed off and ignored. But there’s a glint of something else there too, something she knows how to use to her advantage.   
  
Closing her mind carefully she takes another step down to face him.  
  
 _Arrogance_ , oh she can taste it in the air around him. He’s come so far, he can see no end to it, can no longer picture his own downfall. She wonders what it’s like.   
  
She glances at his outstretched hand, those eyes that prod at her very soul, the harsh and beautiful face. A fallen angel, a creature from the darkest depths of hell. Was he ever made of light?   
  
“Time to come home,” he says as though she has ever had one.   
  
Leta tilts her head, studies him with what she hopes is an unreadable expression. His mind opens for her - only briefly and only with great effort on her part but it _opens_ and she tears the cracks apart, forcing in her own scattered streaks of magic. Everything pauses and she thinks she can hear him gasp but of course that is not true; everything pauses and for a second Leta is the one in charge, reading his mind like an open book. War, everywhere: Muggle soldiers, wizard soldiers, dying bodies, corpses, ruin, ruin, ruin. She blinks, flinches, wants to leave or go further back to when he wasn’t drenched in this suffocating darkness. There are other memories there: a chess board in a corner lit by floating candles; a young Grindelwald in a vast library, grinning to himself; a slightly older Grindelwald beneath a pear tree, summoning ripe fruit into his palms; an auburn-haired wizard sleeping next to him in a narrow bed, Grindelwald pressing kisses along his spine. How he treasures that last memory, the force of it slams against her mind before he pushes her out.   
  
_He misses you. Not quite as much as you miss him, but you knew that already. You lost more than he did._  
  
Grindelwald’s eyes narrow, a shift to his expression; the corners of his mouth twitch slightly.   
  
_Passion_.   
  
Leta looks at Theseus and Newt, both pale in the bleak greyness of this place. Her last resort. Her grave.   
  
“I _love_ you,” she says and there’s no fear left when she raises her wand and focuses all of her magic, every scrap of the power in her body to this one thought, this one force stronger than what the brilliant man who thinks he will change the world can ever conjure up. This one, final hope that remains in her bones even as she realises everything else is too late.    
  
The Seer’s skull cracks open and the air with it, with the rage it causes and in the corner of her eye she sees Newt preparing to escape with his brother, sees Grindelwald’s wounded pride and when she feels his magic overpower her own she casts her final spell - one last counter-spell - with a half-smile.   
  
_You are a monster, Gellert. He will destroy you._   
  


 

* * *

  
  
  


**4\. Light**

  
  
  
_ We’ll protect him _ , Leta had said when she stood in his office some months ago. Her eyes had sparked fires, her words had all been sharp blades, her mind much more brilliant than he had remembered. We’ll protect them both.  _ Just tell me how.  _   
  
And now she’s dead and Albus can’t sleep, the light from the stars keeping him up at all hours.    
  
  
  
\-   - -   
  
  
  
“I’m so sorry,” he tells Newt, ashamed of the way his words carry no weight in the face of the losses.    
  
Ashamed of the way his inaction has caused so much suffering, so much pain that nothing will ever make up for it and nothing  _ should _ . Ashamed of his own fear, his own grief that he has no right to.    
  
Then Newt hands him Gellert’s vial and everything cracks open in a different way, tugs at him from a new angle.    
  
Their damned, wretched blood troth.    
  
One single moment back in Godric’s Hollow, one moment of complete and utter trust in another human being that feels like it has had a hold on his life ever since, darkened his path and clawed at his thoughts. It’s a hitch in his voice, a quiet sob in his chest.    
  
_ Oh, it wasn’t all bad, my Albus, was it? _   
  
The vial seems like such a small, trivial thing as he holds it up to scrutinize it in the light by the window. Its magic is warm in his palm, like Gellert’s own hand is holding his. A ghost’s touch, grazing over his aching memories and his worn-down desires as gently as his own grip around the visible proof of what they did, once.    
  
With his other hand he raises his wand and murmurs the spell that will light another star in his sky. A desolate star, far apart from the rest. Some years from now Albus will join him but now, he knows in his tired bones, the world has waited long enough for him to step out of his shadows.    
  
_ The old ways serve us no longer, Gellert.   _ _   
_   
It’s time to march off to war, at long last.


End file.
